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John Bolton: Israel Should Nuke Iran

03/18/2010 05:12 am ETUpdated
May 25, 2011

The neocons are ratcheting it up a few notches. All the way to nuclear war.

Here is what former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said in Chicago on Tuesday.

"Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions...So we're at a very unhappy point -- a very unhappy point -- where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran's program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future," he said.

In other words, the way to avert the danger of a nuclear attack is to launch a nuclear attack.

And know this. John Bolton is no outlier. Like Feith, Perle, Kristol and Krauthammer, he is at the heart and soul of neoconservatism.

Give him credit. He says what neocons think. It's war they want, even nuclear. Anything to stop nuclear proliferation!

Will Bolton get his war? Not likely. But Luban explains what he's really up to. "It is nothing new for Bolton and his neoconservative allies to threaten an Israeli strike against Iran. But Bolton's use of the "n-word" is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks. An Israeli strike, nuclear or otherwise, without U.S. permission remains unlikely. But as it often the case, I suspect that Bolton's intention is less to give an accurate description of reality than it is to stake out positions extreme enough to shift the boundaries of debate as a whole to the right."

In other words, nuclear war is only Bolton's dream -- something to hope for but not really expect to get.